Curtis W. Jacobs and the Nature of Slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland

During the nineteenth century, Curtis W. Jacobs kept a diary describing his life as a father and slave owner. His meticulous accounting of both personal wealth and that of both "families," his immediate family and the thirty-eight black slaves he retained on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, permitted a wealth of information back to a time when owning slaves provided a great profit. He did identify each slave by their first name while other slave holders listed by gender only. Publicly, Jacobs demonstrated a lack of concern when it came to the well being of his slaves. He offered a great deal of information on the struggles he had with them. It became evident during this research that Jacobs was obsessed over personal wealth and the status he held within the community. His diary appeared to be a "dumping ground" as he described the discontent he had with his slaves. During a small segment of time from 1856-1864, Jacobs documented the movement of slavery through emancipation and the affects it had on Worcester County.;Thousands of white men bolstered their economic and social positions by owning slaves. Records indicate that slave owners became self-sufficient in gathering food, clothing, and manufactured goods they required due to the unsteady decline in the tobacco market that had made up the main economy on the Shore. When Chesapeake planters turned to the production of wheat and corn to compensate for the fall in tobacco production, they required a larger labor force: slavery.;The sole purpose of slavery was to provide southern farms with domestic workers and field hands to labor from sunrise to sunset. Through this dull backbreaking existence, they dug ditches, built fences, plowed, harvested crops, and built railroads which were regulated and orchestrated by masters and overseers. During winter months, slaves were hired out to other plantations in surrounding counties and southern states. A major problem in hiring out slaves to other plantation owners was the degree of independence slaves gained while in another's employ. This was a detriment to the already strained relationships between Jacobs and his slaves as this research will provide.;Abolitionists and the Underground Railroad caused much unrest among Southern slaveholders. Curtis W. Jacobs took matters into his own hands and served as delegate to the Slave Holder's Convention in Annapolis where he presented a lengthy speech on the Free Colored Population of Maryland. He argued that the manumission of slaves be forbidden, he discussed the growing population of free blacks in the state, and recommended that either free blacks be re-enslaved or expelled from the state.;This research is a small segment of Jacobs' life and that of his slaves. Perusing various documents, Jacobs' diary, and the speech he presented before the delegates of Maryland, much was discovered of a time when the South was caught between the unrest of war and emancipation as the country crept toward the twentieth century leaving the physical "chains of slavery" behind.;The research provided in this thesis has been based on documents found at Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture, Salisbury University, Salisbury, Md.; 1860, 1870, and 1880 Free Persons Census at Heritage Quest Online-Census Image website; the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, Md.; Worcester County Court House, Berlin, Md.; Worcester County Library, Ocean City, Md.; and the Boston Public Library in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the fervent attempt of this research to locate surnames of Jacobs' slaves and to provide a starting point for future genealogical research.